In a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday in Abuja, EFCC Chairman Abdulrasheed Bawa provided an update on the organisation’s recent endeavours.
After meeting with the president, Bawa met with the State House media and said that the number of governors under investigation by the Commission for possible money laundering had climbed from the three previously announced.
However, the EFCC director did not reveal how many governors are under investigation or surveillance.
Bello Matawalle, the governor of Zamfara, was one of the people who dared the EFCC to look into his home after it was said that a “huge amount of money for laundering through cash payment of salaries” was found in one of his properties.
In a statement on behalf of Matawalle, Alhaji Ibrahim Dosara, the State Commissioner for Information, issued the challenge.
But the head of the anti-corruption agency asked the public to help the commission find corrupt lawmakers who were hiding large amounts of money for their own benefit.
”We are monitoring everything, Nigerians are helping. Well, I don’t want to give you the figures so that you will not go and speculate whether they are in the north or in the south, but it’s important that Nigerians key into it,” he said.
The anti-corruption boss has also spoken highly of the new naira makeover initiative, calling it “a key procedure” in the country’s ongoing effort to combat financial crimes and corruption.
He claims that it is impossible to track down financial crimes because so much money has disappeared from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
He said the redesigned naira would provide the administration with a chance to rein in the country’s monetary system.
“You know that there is an obligation of money laundering law that we have, in which an individual is expected to carry out a transaction that is above N5 million naira, through the financial institution.
”There is also the threshold in which a corporate entity is expected to carry out transactions that is above N10 million in the financial sector and why is it so?
”It is so because financial institutions are expected to be making currency transaction reports, and suspicious transaction reports to relevant agencies. With that, institutions like us will be able to monitor which funds are legitimate and which ones are not.
“Here we are now, in which 85% of our currency is out in circulation and people are carrying out transactions above the thresholds as provided for by this provision over and above that we will not be able to monitor, we don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.
Bawa claims that these exchanges pave the way for and facilitate crimes like kidnapping, extortion, bribery, and the payment of ransom.
“So, we are happy with this naira redesign in the sense that it will give the Central Bank an opportunity of going back to square one, by the time they collect all these monies back to their system, then they are going to control the money that they are going to release to the system.
“Then, of course, once the monies are back within the financial institution, it will help to further boost economic activities in the sense that there will be more money for people to borrow.
”Then, we on our own part, we’ll have the avenue of monitoring what we are doing with all these huge resources that are out there, within the financial institutions.
“So it is a good thing for all of us, for the entire country and that is why we are calling on Nigerians to embrace the policy, to thank the President for coming up with this and then of course, to champion the cause of the successful implementation of this naira redesign,” he added.
However, he urged politicians to never accept illegal contributions to their campaigns.
“For politicians, the message is very clear. Of course, you know, they should sell themselves, they should talk about issues.
”We want to hear about how they are going to solve the problems, not what the problems are, I think it is very important and I think they are doing that.
”And then of course, we encourage that they shouldn’t use illegitimate funds in their campaign finances and all of that,” he said.
